In what chair Joe Longo conceded is a “complex transition”, new reforms around information sharing, breach reporting and hawking will be introduced between 1 and 5 October.
Among the changes include AFS licensees needing to notify clients affected by any breaches of the law within a certain time frame and a new reference-checking regime to vet potential advisers.
ASIC commissioner Danielle Press addressed the incoming regulations during a parliamentary hearing on Friday.
“We are working collectively and constructively with the advice industry and the superannuation industry to ensure that they, firstly, understand what their obligations are, but also to take what is a facilitative approach to those funds and those advisers that are making their best efforts to comply with the law,” Ms Press said.
“We understand that there is a confluence of regulation coming into play on the 5th of October and we are cognisant that industry is struggling to get their heads around some of it and we are working with them pretty closely.”
Following the announcement earlier this month, Mr Longo was optimistic about the potential impact of each reform, asserting that the changes will help ensure fairer outcomes for consumers.
“The benefits will increase over time as consumer outcomes become the focus and experience accrues,” he said.
“We want to ensure the reforms are successfully implemented – and that means we will continue to work with industry, and build on the efforts by industry associations and individual licensees in preparing for these reforms.”
Remember when ASIC had a facilitative approach to 10yr lookbacks on Adviser ongoing fees, then when they worked with Dover with a facilitative approach?
Facilitative Adviser distraction at every turn by a bloated corrupt ASIC.
ASIC say we are here to help you Advisers = more & more BS Regs & Red Tape at every turn and a giant whacking stick to follow
I could not disagree with you more. Could you imagine what a dysfunctional circus the industry would be without ASIC. Stronger reference checking is well over due. And clients need to advised as quickly as possible about breaches – and that’s not hard to do because every adviser has a data base with all the clients details so advising breaches is just a simple process
The Industry is a dysfunctional circus right now, thanks to the overly complex red-tape nightmare imposed by ASIC’s overreach and meddling through political lobbying and submissions to the RC and FASEA. Serious breaches involving harmful advice need to be reported and by all means throw the book at them. But the vast majority of breaches involve honest advisers providing good advice to happy clients, but caught out by technical breaches of the most complex and draconian advice regulation in the world, with a regulator that prefers to wait and say ‘gotcha’ than provide sensible, workable guidance beforehand.
No, I think that’s not completely correct. The legislation is complex yes, but that is broken down to Regs and the Regs are further broken down by the licensee to their operations manuals. So by the time it reaches the adviser its pretty easy to follow. That doesn’t mean an adviser has to like the rules but at least they understand what has to be done. From my experience the regulator doesn’t go for “gotchas”. The licensee may but that would be in the severe minority. and from experience I’ve never found the regulator not to accept reasonable reasons for why a mistake was made. Breaches are made almost daily but the very vast majority are an innocent mistake and go no further than being reportable but not actionable. Serious breaches are a different matter and repeated serious breaches are inexcusable. But unfortunately the regulator has to manage to the lowest common denominator and it’s the industry’s job to expose those people and businesses.